1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system that is capable of connecting a portable terminal with a registration terminal for registering target information via a network to provide the target information in the registration terminal to the portable terminal, and to a terminal for use in the same system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an information providing system, a registration terminal, and a portable terminal which are suitable for providing appropriate information depending upon the position of a user and for facilitating acquisition of information by the user.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, information viewer systems, such as that disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-126184, are known as a system in which information is downloaded for use from a terminal connected to a network with such an information viewer system, when a storage medium owned by a user is connected to an information providing terminal device via storage medium connecting device, the information providing terminal device retrieves information from an information server via a network, and the retrieved information is transferred to and stored in the storage medium. By connecting the storage medium to an information display terminal device, the information stored in the storage medium can be displayed on the information display terminal device so as to be viewed by the user. Accordingly, a user is readily able to retrieve and view required information without the needs for explicit operation for selecting information.
However, in such a conventional information viewer system, which is adapted to provide information into uniformity, the same content of information could only be obtained in whatever condition a user downloads the same information, and it can be difficult to provide appropriate information in accordance with the circumstance of the user. For instance, it is assumed that shop or sightseeing guidance information is provided as part of information providing services. If a user far from the shop or sightseeing spot of interest uses a portable terminal to access the guidance information, simplified guidance information only about the outline of the shop or sightseeing spot may be provided. If a user near the shop or the sightseeing spot of interest uses a portable terminal to access it, detailed guidance information regarding the content or specific direction of the shop or sightseeing spot may be provided, thereby providing appropriate information depending upon the position of a user.
Like homepages on the Internet, simplified information may also be posted on a top page, followed by detailed information in a hierarchical manner, thereby allowing a user to obtain the information content desired by the user. However, if the desired information is placed in a deep hierarchy from the top page, a user must search for the information while viewing hierarchically ordered pages page by page from the top page, thereby wasting labor and time. In addition, access from a portable terminal such as a cellular phone may require repeated trial-and-error accesses, thereby making the communications costly.
Rather, it may also be contemplated that only detailed information be provided every time. However, in the case where sightseeing information is provided, as described above, detailed information may not be necessarily required sometimes depending upon the position of a user. The detailed information requires proportionally large capacity of data, resulting in undesirable communications load placed on a portable terminal if the information is not necessary to a user.